Lack of access to reproductive or abortion healthcare impacts abused women.
Key points:
- With reproductive coercion, an intimate partner prevents a woman from making decisions about her body.
- Intimate partner violence is a factor in 64 percent of all homicides of pregnant and postpartum women.
- Healthcare professionals treating pregnant women must assess for risk of coercion and violence and offer help.
According to new data from the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH), reports of abuse involving reproductive coercion nearly doubled in the year after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Clearly, restricting women’s access to reproductive care and abortion has a tremendous impact on everyone, but abuse survivors especially.
Reproductive Coercion
Reproductive coercion is defined as behaviors or actions by an intimate partner that prevent a woman from making critical decisions about her body or reproductive health. In an intimate partnership with one exerting abusive power over the other, reproductive coercion becomes another form of abuse that increases danger, instills fear, and furthers entrapment.
From my assessment of controlling behaviors used by partners with women in my recovery groups, sexual abuse can take various forms:
• Using threats or coercion to have sex with you or have sex you don’t like.
• Waking up to find your partner having or attempting sex with you.
• Rape–forcing sex acts against your will. (This is less frequently identified; at times, I believe rape occurred, but this was just too painful to admit.)
Reproductive coercion can also include refusing to use contraception and/or preventing a partner from using contraception, restricting her from getting the healthcare she needs, and preventing a partner from receiving abortion care. In whatever form, reproductive coercion endangers women’s lives and sense of safety.
Pregnancy Puts an Abuse Survivor at Higher Risk for Homicide
Intimate partner violence is a factor in 64 percent of all homicides of pregnant and postpartum women, and more than half of all homicides committed against pregnant and postpartum women occur in their own homes (Campbell et al., 2022).
In the United States, homicide is the leading cause of death of women who are pregnant or have given birth within a year. According to researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, women in the United States who are pregnant or have given birth are more apt to be murdered than die from a childbirth-related cause. In addition, they identify that homicides are directly linked to a deadly combination of intimate partner violence and firearms (Oct. 2022).
A 2022 study found that being pregnant or postpartum increases a person’s risk of homicide by 35 percent compared to those of reproductive age who are not pregnant or postpartum; 55 percent of those homicides occurred in the home and are thus classified as domestic violence (Wallace, 2022).
Marium Durrani, vice president of policy at NDVH, stresses that if you cannot make decisions regarding reproductive health, it could mean, unfortunately, that this inability inhibits your escape, forces you to stay with an abusive partner longer than you want, and potentially requires you to have a child with someone you don’t want to have a child with nor feel it’s safe to have a child with.
What to Do
Since pregnant women usually have many visits with healthcare providers, opportunities are created for providers to assess coercion, violence, and risk to the fetus. Being prepared to offer help or provide resources to get help can save lives.
This article originally appeared on Psychology Today.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233. To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
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